According to US diplomat Alberto M. Fernandez, "While the majority of victims in the conflict raging in Syria and Iraq have been Muslims, Christians have borne a heavy burden given their small numbers."[12]

On February 3, 2016, the European Union recognized the persecution of Christians by Islamic State in Syria as genocide.[13][14][15][16] The vote was unanimous. The United States followed suit on March 15, 2016, in declaring these atrocities as genocide.[17] The vote was unanimous.[18] On April 20, 2016, British Parliament voted unanimously to declare denounce the actions as genocide.[19]

Contents

Background

The mass flight and expulsion of ethnic Assyrians from Iraq is a process which initiated from the beginning of Iraq War in 2003 and continues to this day. Leaders of Iraq's Assyrian community estimate that over two-thirds of the Iraqi Assyrian population may have fled the country or been internally displaced since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 until 2011. Reports suggest that whole neighborhoods of Assyrians have cleared out in the cities of Baghdad and Basra, and that both Sunni and Shiite insurgent groups and militias have threatened Assyrian Christians.[20] Following the campaign of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Iraq in August 2014, one quarter of the remaining Iraqi Assyrians fled the Jihadists, finding refuge in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.[21]

Timeline

Fall of Mosul and the Ninewa Plain

After the fall of Mosul, ISIS demanded Assyrian Christians in the city to convert to Islam, pay tribute, or face execution, by July 19, 2014.[22] This resulted in a complete Assyrian Christian exodus from Mosul, marking the end of 1600 years of continuous Christian presence.[23] A church mass was not held in Mosul for the first time in 1,800 years.[24]

ISIS had also been seen marking Christian homes with the letter nūn for Nassarah ("Christian").[25][26] Several religious buildings were seized and subsequently demolished, most notably Mar Behnam Monastery.[27]

In early November 2014, a horrifying "price list" for Yazidi and Christian females surfaced online. While human rights NGO Defend International immediately verified the document's authenticity,[31] UN official Zainab Bangura didn't confirm it to be genuine before August 2015.[32]

Beheading of Copts

On February 12, 2015, the ISIL released a report in their online magazine Dabiq showing photos of 21 Egyptian Copts migrant workers that they had kidnapped in the city of Sirte, Libya, and whom they threatened to kill to "avenge the [alleged] kidnapping of Muslim women by the Egyptian Coptic Church".[33] The men, who came from different villages in Egypt, 13 of them from Al-Our, Minya Governorate,[34] were kidnapped in Sirte in two separate attacks on December 27, 2014, and in January 2015.[35]

According to US diplomat Alberto M. Fernandez, of the 232 of the Assyrians kidnapped in the ISIS attack on the Assyrian Christian farming villages on the banks of the Khabur River in Northeast Syria, 51 were children and 84 women. "Most of them remain in captivity with one account claiming that ISIS is demanding $22 million (or roughly $100,000 per person) for their release."[12]

On 8 October, ISIL released a video showing three of the Assyrian men kidnapped in Khabur being executed. It was reported that 202 of the 253 kidnapped Assyrians were still in captivity, each one with a demanded ransom of $100,000.[38]

Reactions

On 2 and 3 August 2014, thousands of Assyrians/Syriacs of the diaspora protested the persecution of their fellow Assyrians within Iraq and Syria, demanding a United Nations-led creation of a safe haven for minorities in the Nineveh Plains.[39][40]

I will follow anyone and tell everyone
that this is happening in the century twenty-one

In December 2015, at a Townhall event, Secretary Hillary Clinton called the systematic persecution genocide.[43]

In February, 2016, a Swedish member of the European Parliament said of the unanimous vote to recognize atrocities as genocide: "It gives the victims of the atrocities a chance to get their human dignity restored. It's also a historical confirmation that the European Parliament recognized what is going on and that they are suffering from the most despicable crime in the world, namely genocide."[14]